Share This Story!

Heart of Art: Memphis, ‘a muse to so many’

In advance of the award-winning musical, “Memphis,” at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, St. Michael‘s music professor, William Ellis, reflects on why this “capital of the Delta,” as Shelby Foote and others have observed, remains a muse to so many.

Heart of Art: Memphis, ‘a muse to so many’

“I came up from Texas through Louisiana. I didn’t know I was on Highway 61 but I knew that Memphis was where you made gold records.”

— Domingo “Sam the Sham” Zamudio of “Wooly Bully” fame

Doesn’t matter if you’re “Walking in Memphis,” going to “Memphis in the Meantime,” meeting a “gin-soaked, barroom queen in Memphis,” or catching the “Last Train to Memphis,” the city’s name says it all.

For more than a century, Memphis, Tenn., has played a key role in defining popular musical tastes, trends, and innovation, from gospel music, jug bands and electric blues to rock ’n’ roll, soul and hip-hop. It has been home to some of the most iconic personalities in American music from Elvis Presley, B.B. King and Jerry Lee Lewis to Isaac Hayes, Al Green and Justin Timberlake. It’s where you can walk the dog and walk the line. Plus, there’s just something magical about putting that name in a title — “Dusty in Memphis,” anyone?

In advance of the award-winning musical, “Memphis,” at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, allow me to briefly reflect on why this “capital of the Delta,” as Shelby Foote and others have observed, remains a muse to so many.

Sitting on a bluff beside the Mississippi River with the fabled Highway 61 dipping into downtown, Memphis is an urban center with a rural heart, a city once built on the backs and blood of African-American laborers via the cotton trade, but also a city built on the profound cultural contributions of its black populace. Its historic center, Beale Street, where “business never closes till somebody gets killed,” according to the infamous boast of “Beale Street Blues,” attracted the best talent in the surrounding Mid-South. It was where W.C. Handy scored his “St Louis Blues” (and where the same-named film starring Bessie Smith had its world premiere), where Memphis Minnie got discovered, where Robert Johnson’s most celebrated image was taken, and where B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland battled it out at talent nights emceed by Rufus Thomas.

The careers of Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward would have looked differently without their first million-sellers — “Move On Up a Little Higher” and “Surely God Is Able,” respectively — both courtesy of Memphis gospel composer W. Herbert Brewster; the Cotton Club found one of its great house bands in the musical joy and daring of the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, led by a former Memphis gym teacher; Otis Redding drove up to the Stax label a chauffeur and left a star; MC Hammer wouldn’t have had his distinctive dance moves nor Lil Jon “crunk” were it not for Memphis gangsta rap; and a significant swath of indie and alt rock acts owe as much gratitude to the power pop genius of Big Star as punk rockers owe to Iggy Pop (who, by the way, revealed to me that the Stooges cribbed Booker T. & the MGs classics such as “Green Onions” for their ideas).

Beginning with Sun Records and its legendary founder-producer Sam Phillips, Memphis music-making has often been an earthy and unconventional process, placing feel over perfection, and its studios, producers and engineers have long attracted A-listers in search of that mystique — ZZ Top made most of its hit albums there, for starters. “Soul Man,” “In the Midnight Hour,” “Sweet Caroline,” and “When Love Comes to Town” all bear the Memphis stamp of approval as do seminal records by Stevie Ray Vaughan, R.E.M., Cat Power, Jack White and others. Just last year, Montpelier’s own Dave Keller made the pilgrimage to record his acclaimed album, “Soul Changes.”

I’ve walked into an Auckland pub as it was playing Big Star, had soul fans share their love of James Carr with me in Japan, and recently heard “Ring My Bell” by Memphis elementary school teacher Anita Ward perfuming the air at a Jericho hair salon.

The city’s legacy continues today, either indirectly in famous pop figures such as Drake, Katy Perry, and Kings of Leon (whose fathers all have ties to the greater Memphis area) or in a new generation of Bluff City-honed talent such as world boogie mavens the North Mississippi Allstars, rootsy songstress Valerie June, and Academy Award notables Three 6 Mafia, the first African-American rap act to win an Oscar just as fellow Memphian Isaac Hayes became the first African-American composer to win an Oscar decades prior for “Theme from Shaft.”

Home as well to the first self-service grocery (Piggly Wiggly), the first chain hotel (Holiday Inn), and arguably the first rock and roll record (“Rocket 88”), Memphis embodies the do-it-yourself spirit like few American destinations. It delights in the maverick, misfit, risk taker and musical recalcitrant. If you’re not doing anything different, you’re not doing anything at all, Sam Phillips would say. Another iconoclast Memphis producer, Jim Dickinson, put it to me this way: Anywhere else, Elvis would have stayed a truck driver.

St. Michael’s College assistant professor of music William L. Ellis was the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper’s pop music writer from 1996 to 2005. He serves on the Flynn programming committee.

“Memphis” at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts:

All available tickets are sold for “Memphis” 8 p.m. Friday at the Flynn Center, 153 Main, Burlington. The box office will keep a waiting list for any released tickets Friday beginning at 5 p.m. Call 863-5966 or go to www.flynncenter.org for more information.